For aeroplane lovers.
 

If you are fond of aeroplanes, here's a bit of vision of a recent event at Perth's Langley Park. Perth is the capital city of Western Australia and Langley Park was the airport from which commercial airline operations first commenced, pioneered by Sir Norman Brierley.

Perth City would likely be one of a few rare cities which have kept an airfield within its central precinct. How long that lasts is anyone's guess. Langley Park may be more well known to the world as Perth's airfield for the Red Bull Air races.

The vision was shot on a Sony PMW-EX1 with a piece of synthetic wool fleece for a windsock over the in-camera mike.

Re: For aeroplane lovers.
 

Great Bob! I lived in Perth for eight years and never got to see this. Maybe I will when I get back there. Dad is a pilot and I have loved planes forever. It is so fortunate that the strip is still there. Will it still be possible when Chevron puts up their tower at Elizabeth Quay?

Re: For aeroplane lovers.
 

Gee, i'm amazed they are allowed to do thst. the crowd look awefully close on your side. If something went wrong on takeoff and one veered to its left5 it would be LOOKOUT!! and those buildings look awefully big and close. Love aviation. Great to see.

Re: For aeroplane lovers.
 

"Gee, i'm amazed they are allowed to do that".

Thankfully, we have not been quite yet nanny-stated out of our minds. They flew the Red Bull Air Races out of Langley Park and the competition course was directly alongside in the river.

You will observe that all the aircraft, "weathercocked" to port momentarily in that brief moment of transition from tail down as rudder authority was established. The sea-breeze was on and it was about 25 degrees to port of dead-ahead.

I think the red one which appeared to be close to out of control was working to a media camera nearer to the take-off and situated out of my view behind the onlookers.

They are all very good aviators and regularly practice their formations, last time I went with them, it was on Friday afternoons. They were taking off in pairs in three-pair streams from Jandakot a few years back and maybe still do.


I posted this clip on YT way back in the days when you had to do tricky things to your clips to force YT to scale the image correctly. Later when they got it together at their end the clip became distorted.

It is amazing just how far miniaturisation has progressed compact stabilisers. Back when this clip was made, the only active stabiliserrs were huge things for mounting on boats.

Re: For aeroplane lovers.
 

"Will it still be possible when Chevron puts up their tower at Elizabeth Quay?"

It was suggested by some that this most recent event may be the last fly-in. Likely even with Liz Quay high-rise, they could still fly in against the sea breeze, park overnight and depart against the morning easterly. Go-arounds might not be so easy though.

The skilled pilots may well be able to do what most were doing, swing out over the river by the time the council carpark is overflown which would put the Chevron building out of harm's way. I thought the Belltower would have brought things to an end but it did not. The Red Bull guys were high and safe by the time they were over the row of date palms on Vic Ave.

Until the moneymen manage to eBay enough politicians to sideline the greater good and Langley ends up being in-filled by developments, it will remain viable for mass helicopter operations if the need should arise.

They flew a RAAF DHC Caribou in and out some years back, so I am told.